Over the past several years, the number of installed computer systems has increased. In addition, these computer systems are getting more and more complicated with many subsystems. Also, computer systems are being integrated with others across a room, in another building, and perhaps in another part of the country. This proliferation of computer systems has resulted in an increase in productivity of certain types of employees, but at the same time it has created a need for many new employees. In particular, new computer technicians have been hired to monitor and repair the new computer systems. To help aid in the monitoring process many of these computer systems include an operating console which is displayed on a video display. The operating console shows the status of various system components like disk drives, chillers, data communication lines, etc.
A need exists for a way to consolidate all of these monitoring activities into a single site. For example, eight operating consoles could be consolidated into one monitoring device which would reduce the need for employees who perform monitoring operations by 8 to 1.
In addition, a need exists for automating some of the routine control situations like restarting a computer system, calling a repair or service representative, and rerouting data communication links. Such automation has been done in the past by adding additional hardware and software agents or processes which run on the computer system being monitored. The disadvantage of such approaches are that they are inflexible to changes made to the underlying computer system. For example, if a controller board is added to a mainframe computer and then that system is updated to a new data bus type, the old controller board is no longer useful. Similarly, when software agents are run on the computer system to be monitored, they must be tailored to the operating system being run on the computer system and must be tested to determine whether they interfere with other software or processes which are to be run on the computer system.
A better solution to this monitoring and control problem would be to find a way to perform these operations without adding hardware or software to the computer system to be monitored. The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems, and offers other advantages over the prior art.